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It’s part of Sue Perkins’s comic persona that behind the narrowed eyes and serrated wit lies, you can’t help feeling, a thoroughly decent sort. Comedy and niceness aren’t always bedfellows, but Perkins’s stock as a presenter and quiz-show panellist could hardly be higher.

What we have here is more of a gamble: her first sitcom, her first series as a writer and her first venture into out-and-out acting. She plays Sara, a slightly hopeless vet who’s turning 40 and still hasn’t told her parents she’s gay. A key early scene involves a phone call from her mother (Harriet Walter) where Sara finds herself improvising wildly about a fictional boyfriend, a French prosthetics salesman (“Legs mainly, artificial legs...”).

This is someone who feels endlessly awkward, or worse: “I feel shame all the time. It’s like ivy creeping round me,” she tells her best friend. But is that curable? Finding out initially involves a 40th birthday party, a game of netball and a dead cat.

About this programme

1/6. New series. Comedy, devised by and starring Sue Perkins, following the fortunes of Sara, a head vet approaching the age of 40, who faces the challenge of telling her parents she is gay. Aware that she needs to make changes to her life, her friends arrange a surprise birthday party for Sara and pay for her to have sessions with an eccentric lifestyle therapist. However, their kindness leads to a dramatic ultimatum. With Harriet Walter and Joanna Scanlan.